And here I thought that Wikipedia would be knowledgeable enough to know that authentication based on IP does not work. This has been known for...over a decade, I think. Authenticate users by...authenticating the _user_, and you might actually create a system that doesn't suffer from problems like the above.
Erm, they most certainly do have such a system. However, like Slashdot and many other sites, they allow anonymous editing. The problems here are with anonymous editing, as was clearly indicated in the quote you posted. Whilst allowing anonymous edits is a matter of some debate on Wikipedia, it has always been one of its important policies, and arguably has helped it become so successful (it encourages people to edit straight away - creating an account might not be hard, but the fact remains that in practice, people will be less likely to contribute on a site that requires an account to do anything).
BTW, how many professors let you cite encyclopedias as a source? Not many last I heard. Even professors who contribute to encyclopedias still forbid using them as a source.
ID cards? Well, the rest of the world already has them (including the USA -- that's what your driver's license and your SSN basically are, we don't have anything like those in the UK yet).
No, they don't. The problem is not with having ID - we already have ID cards such as driving licence and passport. The problem is the national database associated with it, the large amount of information stored (including biometrics), the immense cost of it (billions - or over £90 per person), the penalties for failing to keep information up to date, or report cards lost, damaged or stolen, and its compulsory nature.
I am not aware of any country that has a system like the UK's ID card and database - you can't compare it to other systems that simply happen to be forms of ID.
Claiming that people have a problem with simply a form of ID is a straw man argument.
We're perfectly aware of what's happening, we just don't think it's particularly bad.
Well, it's true a lot of people are apathetic and don't care, but it's not true that people are aware of it and think it's okay. You certainly don't speak for British people.
From their newsgroup virginmedia.support.broadband.cable (on news.virginmedia.com):
"This is not something that technical support would have any information or control over. This is not only Virgin (as stated in the article) but multiple ISP's .
"Sorry if this has caused any inconvenience but is not a fault but an active measure to stop inappropriate content on the Internet."
And:
"I stated that we are unable to offer support for this issue. It is due to a decision make in conjunction with the IWF to block sites containing potential offensive material. The reason for the block isn't actually with virginmedia but with wikimedia. They have blocked editing rights to their service as VirginMedia are using a transparent proxy to this site and subdomains. This is identified as a single IP; therefore wikimedia are unable to moderate as it would moderate every VM customer."
Yes - I never claimed otherwise - but whether or not standards change, that has nothing to do with the claim that nude images of children are usually illegal.
There is also no evidence that standards have changed such that this image would now be illegal. That should be up to the courts to decide - hence, the problem is still with the censoring.
It's a law based on cultural perceptions of indecency, not a specific definition.
Which is exactly why you can't make claims about whether this image is illegal simply because it's nude! It's based on the perception of indency, not a specific definition. You are contradicting your own argument, here.
Obviously there's some subjectivity there, but if an adult woman was in the same pose with her genitals only just hidden by a photoshop trick, I expect that many people would agree that it is a "sexual pose".
I'm not sure that they would. The main reason it would be considered porn for an adult woman is the presence of breasts, which doesn't apply here.
Note that the UK has different laws to the USA. In the UK, an image without sexual contact can still be indecent (and hence illegal) if a jury decides that it is.
Note, that although the UK has different laws to the USA, we still have juries to decide whether things are illegal or not (or they're supposed to, anyway - evidently the IWF thinks otherwise).
I personally would of liked to see the CPS bring charges against Wikipedia.... I'd prosecute the publishers (Wikipedia)
Why? Whilst you might argue that the record company profited from this image, how can this be said of a free encyclopedia that is using the image solely to document an encyclopedic article on the album? If anyone should be prosecuted by your argument, it should be the record company - though I wonder why they haven't done so in 30 years of child porn being illegal in the UK...
Lets be real clear here... this is an image that is of a minor in a sexually provocative pose being used for profit (marketing). It is child pornography. That's not in a grey area
Really? Well thanks for clearing it up. Whenever we are unclear of whether a particular nude image is "indecent" or not, we can just go ask Numen on Slashdot, as he obviously knows.
Or... rather than debating on forums, we could get some legal experts to argue the case, in front of, oh I don't know, some randomly selected members of the public who could then make a decision, having heard arguments from both sides?
Can you point me to the court ruling where this image was found to be child porn? Or has the UK done away with the hassle of trials, instead preferring just to go by what it thinks might be illegal?
Whilst you are correct that the law covers more than images of sex, this does not mean that all nude images are illegal. The term is "indecent". Why has possession of this image never been prosecuted in 30 years of child porn being illegal?
In a strict legal sense, this censorship is justified; the problem is the law itself, which should not define nudity as "pornography".
No, the problem is that this should be up for a jury to decide, not the IWF. If they decided that this image is "indecent", then yes the fault would lie with that ruling, and not the censorship. But until then, the censorship is not justified.
It's both really - that the law is vaguely worded, but also that things are censored merely because they are "potentially" illegal.
Whether or not that image should be considered child porn should be up to the courts to decide.
And from January, according to Government guidance, it seems the IWF are going to be handling reports of "extreme pornography" (that criminalises possession of adult images considered "extreme" and "disgusting", even those involving consenting adults, staged acts, and screenshots from legal films), which is broader and far vaguer than child porn law - so if they start blocking anything that might "potentially" be extreme, I worry that this could mean a lot more sites being blocked.
This also shows that they are willing to blacklist mainstream sites - well, at least they get points for being consistent I suppose (there`s nothing worse than selective enforcement) - but the point is that images that might "potentially" come under the extreme porn law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites. Now even if it may be the case that such a site would never be prosecuted, this shows that the IWF may happily censor any site that has a potentially extreme image on it, no matter what site it is on, or for what purpose it is there for.
It is also misleading that the site returns a fake 404 message - Virgin Media do this, although apparently Demon do not. Is this something decided on a per-ISP level, and something worth complaining to them about?
It's not like Wikipedia is hosted in some lawless country - it's hosted in the US, which has similar laws on child porn, and if it was really a problem it would be easy to cooperate with the US to remove the images.
If every feature is to be installed by default, the browser will have one of two problems: 1 - Full of features, slow and unusable 2 - Fast and lean but with little features.
Funny how Opera manages to have features installed by default, whilst remaining fast, and has a smaller file size than Firefox (last time I checked).
Oh, and I can make my own features, so I'm not dependent on what the 'developers' think it's best for me.
It works both ways - Firefox don't add important features to Firefox "because there's an extension for it"... which means rather than working out the box, I have to hunt down loads of extensions, that I may or may not know the names of, or even if they exist at all, not to mention worrying about which ones will work right or not, or if they'll still work okay with an upgrade.
Your reply should be to LingNoi - he was the one who made the argument that Firefox was better because it had spell checking first. The person you replied to just applied that same logic to Opera - just as you are applying it to Mosaic.
Running applications through parallels is much better than dual-booting, I agree, although I'd still be curious to know how well the integration is? (E.g., how well does copy/paste or drag and drop between apps work, can I rearrange windows from different OSs, and how well do the filesystems work together?)
Plus there is the cost of both Parallels (not to mention buying two OSs rather than one).
There are tons of games out there that are only for the Wii, does that mean that the XBox "isn't up to the job" to run them?
If my interest was that I wanted to run a game that was only available on Wii, then yes, the XBox wouldn't be up to the job for my needs.
There are things that Mac OS X does better than Windows, just like there are things Windows does better than Mac OS X. Fortunately my Mac OS X box can run both so I get the best of both worlds.
Fortunately for me, Windows is up to the job for all my needs. It may or may not be true that OS X does a few things better than Windows (do you have examples?), but the same could be said for AmigaOS, BeOS or whatever else. It's not that I haven't tried running multiple OSs - at some times in the past I've had several OSs installed, and still run Amiga software under Windows, just out of interest, but I find it far more productive to run an OS that can suit all of my needs, rather than having to be dependent on another one when it isn't up to the job.
If I can fix a major Mac OS X one by dual booting then I think that's a good solution
I think that dual booting is a very bad solution. If I want to play a game or run this application, then I have to shut down all my applications, reboot, then afterwards, reboot again, and reopen all my applications. If I only want to play a game for a few minutes, it's too much hassle. If I'm playing a game for a long time, or running an application, then I want to have email, IM, web browsing and so on accessible in case I want to quickly check something, or someone contacts me, in the meantime. I also don't want to have to interrupt any background tasks (downloading, or whatever else).
This might have been acceptable in 1990 when you typically had to reboot between games, but not now (and even in 1990, I multitasked between several applications).
I use an OS that serves all of my needs, and doesn't need me to dual boot into another OS because it isn't up to the job.
If he meant one thing, and someone else substituted a different definition, I agree that would be a misleading argument of semantics. But until he had defined the terms, the only thing we can do is debate semantics, and ask what exactly it is that he meant by the words.
Semantics are important, otherwise I might as well claim that "flibghob" exists - if you tell me that the term is meaningless, can I accuse you of having a pointless semantic argument? Of course not; until I define what flibghob is, a debate on the meaning of the word is essential.
If nothing else, you can define the word in terms of the categories of phenomena to which it is traditionally applied.
Perhaps, but the claim that something is "supernatural in nature" is rather vague if we use this definition - I'm not sure what he means in that case?
On the other hand, MS's track record has shown numerous ways for software to sneak onto your machine without user intervention whatsoever.
This was only true in the past though, and has changed with Vista, if not earlier (although oddly people now bash Vista for its careful prompting of the user - it seems that Microsoft can't win). And even in the past, most viruses on Windows still required user ignorance (running dubious email attachments, or clicking "Yes of course I want to install this" on some dodgy website).
By that reasoning, you should advocate a Commodore 64. You won't get any viruses from the Internet, because nothing new runs on it anymore anyway. Or perhaps not use a computer at all - then you certainly won't run any viruses.
The point is that running software (even if it includes viruses) is still better than not running software. It seems rather odd to me to suggest that one should protect yourself against viruses by reducing your ability to run any kind of software!
(I've never had a virus in almost 10 years of Windows use, btw. Nor have I ever spent any money on anti-virus software.)
No, he's quite right by saying it's what most programs run on. The fact that you can still do a range of tasks on a Mac, Amiga or whatever else doesn't change that point.
Whether it's a useful statistic or not is another matter. I guess one point is that I find it handy that whenever I come across a new program, it's most likely to run on my platform. Yes, there might exist a similar program for a niche platform - in which case, it's extra effort to find it - or there might not (you only list the mainstream obvious computer uses, which is far from the full list of tasks that programs that out there can perform).
But semantics are important here. If that's not what the OP meant by "supernatural", then what on earth did he mean?
This is exactly the problem. People throw around claims like "supernatural", "dimensions", "energy", "souls", and so on, but without any definition of what they mean, these claims are meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
And here I thought that Wikipedia would be knowledgeable enough to know that authentication based on IP does not work. This has been known for...over a decade, I think. Authenticate users by...authenticating the _user_, and you might actually create a system that doesn't suffer from problems like the above.
Erm, they most certainly do have such a system. However, like Slashdot and many other sites, they allow anonymous editing. The problems here are with anonymous editing, as was clearly indicated in the quote you posted. Whilst allowing anonymous edits is a matter of some debate on Wikipedia, it has always been one of its important policies, and arguably has helped it become so successful (it encourages people to edit straight away - creating an account might not be hard, but the fact remains that in practice, people will be less likely to contribute on a site that requires an account to do anything).
BTW, how many professors let you cite encyclopedias as a source? Not many last I heard. Even professors who contribute to encyclopedias still forbid using them as a source.
Fixed that for you.
ID cards? Well, the rest of the world already has them (including the USA -- that's what your driver's license and your SSN basically are, we don't have anything like those in the UK yet).
No, they don't. The problem is not with having ID - we already have ID cards such as driving licence and passport. The problem is the national database associated with it, the large amount of information stored (including biometrics), the immense cost of it (billions - or over £90 per person), the penalties for failing to keep information up to date, or report cards lost, damaged or stolen, and its compulsory nature.
I am not aware of any country that has a system like the UK's ID card and database - you can't compare it to other systems that simply happen to be forms of ID.
Claiming that people have a problem with simply a form of ID is a straw man argument.
We're perfectly aware of what's happening, we just don't think it's particularly bad.
Well, it's true a lot of people are apathetic and don't care, but it's not true that people are aware of it and think it's okay. You certainly don't speak for British people.
From their newsgroup virginmedia.support.broadband.cable (on news.virginmedia.com):
"This is not something that technical support would have any information or
control over. This is not only Virgin (as stated in the article) but
multiple ISP's .
"Sorry if this has caused any inconvenience but is not a fault but an active
measure to stop inappropriate content on the Internet."
And:
"I stated that we are unable to offer support for this issue. It is due to a
decision make in conjunction with the IWF to block sites containing
potential offensive material. The reason for the block isn't actually with
virginmedia but with wikimedia. They have blocked editing rights to their
service as VirginMedia are using a transparent proxy to this site and
subdomains. This is identified as a single IP; therefore wikimedia are
unable to moderate as it would moderate every VM customer."
Indeed - and with 11,695 hits in the last hour, it's now the most popular article.
Yes - I never claimed otherwise - but whether or not standards change, that has nothing to do with the claim that nude images of children are usually illegal.
There is also no evidence that standards have changed such that this image would now be illegal. That should be up to the courts to decide - hence, the problem is still with the censoring.
It's a law based on cultural perceptions of indecency, not a specific definition.
Which is exactly why you can't make claims about whether this image is illegal simply because it's nude! It's based on the perception of indency, not a specific definition. You are contradicting your own argument, here.
Obviously there's some subjectivity there, but if an adult woman was in the same pose with her genitals only just hidden by a photoshop trick, I expect that many people would agree that it is a "sexual pose".
I'm not sure that they would. The main reason it would be considered porn for an adult woman is the presence of breasts, which doesn't apply here.
Note that the UK has different laws to the USA. In the UK, an image without sexual contact can still be indecent (and hence illegal) if a jury decides that it is.
Note, that although the UK has different laws to the USA, we still have juries to decide whether things are illegal or not (or they're supposed to, anyway - evidently the IWF thinks otherwise).
I personally would of liked to see the CPS bring charges against Wikipedia. ... I'd prosecute the publishers (Wikipedia)
Why? Whilst you might argue that the record company profited from this image, how can this be said of a free encyclopedia that is using the image solely to document an encyclopedic article on the album? If anyone should be prosecuted by your argument, it should be the record company - though I wonder why they haven't done so in 30 years of child porn being illegal in the UK...
Lets be real clear here... this is an image that is of a minor in a sexually provocative pose being used for profit (marketing). It is child pornography. That's not in a grey area
Really? Well thanks for clearing it up. Whenever we are unclear of whether a particular nude image is "indecent" or not, we can just go ask Numen on Slashdot, as he obviously knows.
Or ... rather than debating on forums, we could get some legal experts to argue the case, in front of, oh I don't know, some randomly selected members of the public who could then make a decision, having heard arguments from both sides?
Can you point me to the court ruling where this image was found to be child porn? Or has the UK done away with the hassle of trials, instead preferring just to go by what it thinks might be illegal?
Whilst you are correct that the law covers more than images of sex, this does not mean that all nude images are illegal. The term is "indecent". Why has possession of this image never been prosecuted in 30 years of child porn being illegal?
In a strict legal sense, this censorship is justified; the problem is the law itself, which should not define nudity as "pornography".
No, the problem is that this should be up for a jury to decide, not the IWF. If they decided that this image is "indecent", then yes the fault would lie with that ruling, and not the censorship. But until then, the censorship is not justified.
It's both really - that the law is vaguely worded, but also that things are censored merely because they are "potentially" illegal.
According to an article by German computer magazine c't, the image itself has not been blocked, only the article referencing it.
I'm on Virgin Media, and can confirm that both of the URLs you give (for image and article) have been blocked (return a "page not found" error).
Whether or not that image should be considered child porn should be up to the courts to decide.
And from January, according to Government guidance, it seems the IWF are going to be handling reports of "extreme pornography" (that criminalises possession of adult images considered "extreme" and "disgusting", even those involving consenting adults, staged acts, and screenshots from legal films), which is broader and far vaguer than child porn law - so if they start blocking anything that might "potentially" be extreme, I worry that this could mean a lot more sites being blocked.
This also shows that they are willing to blacklist mainstream sites - well, at least they get points for being consistent I suppose (there`s nothing worse than selective enforcement) - but the point is that images that might "potentially" come under the extreme porn law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites. Now even if it may be the case that such a site would never be prosecuted, this shows that the IWF may happily censor any site that has a potentially extreme image on it, no matter what site it is on, or for what purpose it is there for.
It is also misleading that the site returns a fake 404 message - Virgin Media do this, although apparently Demon do not. Is this something decided on a per-ISP level, and something worth complaining to them about?
It's not like Wikipedia is hosted in some lawless country - it's hosted in the US, which has similar laws on child porn, and if it was really a problem it would be easy to cooperate with the US to remove the images.
Amazon also has these images, which are not blocked.
If every feature is to be installed by default, the browser will have one of two problems:
1 - Full of features, slow and unusable
2 - Fast and lean but with little features.
Funny how Opera manages to have features installed by default, whilst remaining fast, and has a smaller file size than Firefox (last time I checked).
Oh, and I can make my own features, so I'm not dependent on what the 'developers' think it's best for me.
It works both ways - Firefox don't add important features to Firefox "because there's an extension for it" ... which means rather than working out the box, I have to hunt down loads of extensions, that I may or may not know the names of, or even if they exist at all, not to mention worrying about which ones will work right or not, or if they'll still work okay with an upgrade.
Who claimed it was the best browser ever?
Your reply should be to LingNoi - he was the one who made the argument that Firefox was better because it had spell checking first. The person you replied to just applied that same logic to Opera - just as you are applying it to Mosaic.
Running applications through parallels is much better than dual-booting, I agree, although I'd still be curious to know how well the integration is? (E.g., how well does copy/paste or drag and drop between apps work, can I rearrange windows from different OSs, and how well do the filesystems work together?)
Plus there is the cost of both Parallels (not to mention buying two OSs rather than one).
There are tons of games out there that are only for the Wii, does that mean that the XBox "isn't up to the job" to run them?
If my interest was that I wanted to run a game that was only available on Wii, then yes, the XBox wouldn't be up to the job for my needs.
There are things that Mac OS X does better than Windows, just like there are things Windows does better than Mac OS X. Fortunately my Mac OS X box can run both so I get the best of both worlds.
Fortunately for me, Windows is up to the job for all my needs. It may or may not be true that OS X does a few things better than Windows (do you have examples?), but the same could be said for AmigaOS, BeOS or whatever else. It's not that I haven't tried running multiple OSs - at some times in the past I've had several OSs installed, and still run Amiga software under Windows, just out of interest, but I find it far more productive to run an OS that can suit all of my needs, rather than having to be dependent on another one when it isn't up to the job.
If I can fix a major Mac OS X one by dual booting then I think that's a good solution
I think that dual booting is a very bad solution. If I want to play a game or run this application, then I have to shut down all my applications, reboot, then afterwards, reboot again, and reopen all my applications. If I only want to play a game for a few minutes, it's too much hassle. If I'm playing a game for a long time, or running an application, then I want to have email, IM, web browsing and so on accessible in case I want to quickly check something, or someone contacts me, in the meantime. I also don't want to have to interrupt any background tasks (downloading, or whatever else).
This might have been acceptable in 1990 when you typically had to reboot between games, but not now (and even in 1990, I multitasked between several applications).
I use an OS that serves all of my needs, and doesn't need me to dual boot into another OS because it isn't up to the job.
If he meant one thing, and someone else substituted a different definition, I agree that would be a misleading argument of semantics. But until he had defined the terms, the only thing we can do is debate semantics, and ask what exactly it is that he meant by the words.
Semantics are important, otherwise I might as well claim that "flibghob" exists - if you tell me that the term is meaningless, can I accuse you of having a pointless semantic argument? Of course not; until I define what flibghob is, a debate on the meaning of the word is essential.
If nothing else, you can define the word in terms of the categories of phenomena to which it is traditionally applied.
Perhaps, but the claim that something is "supernatural in nature" is rather vague if we use this definition - I'm not sure what he means in that case?
On the other hand, MS's track record has shown numerous ways for software to sneak onto your machine without user intervention whatsoever.
This was only true in the past though, and has changed with Vista, if not earlier (although oddly people now bash Vista for its careful prompting of the user - it seems that Microsoft can't win). And even in the past, most viruses on Windows still required user ignorance (running dubious email attachments, or clicking "Yes of course I want to install this" on some dodgy website).
In which case, you are then vulnerable to viruses (along with all the other faults that Mac users claim Windows has).
I don't understand this argument - saying Windows is crap, but then saying Macs can avoid the failings of OS X by running Windows.
By that reasoning, you should advocate a Commodore 64. You won't get any viruses from the Internet, because nothing new runs on it anymore anyway. Or perhaps not use a computer at all - then you certainly won't run any viruses.
The point is that running software (even if it includes viruses) is still better than not running software. It seems rather odd to me to suggest that one should protect yourself against viruses by reducing your ability to run any kind of software!
(I've never had a virus in almost 10 years of Windows use, btw. Nor have I ever spent any money on anti-virus software.)
No, he's quite right by saying it's what most programs run on. The fact that you can still do a range of tasks on a Mac, Amiga or whatever else doesn't change that point.
Whether it's a useful statistic or not is another matter. I guess one point is that I find it handy that whenever I come across a new program, it's most likely to run on my platform. Yes, there might exist a similar program for a niche platform - in which case, it's extra effort to find it - or there might not (you only list the mainstream obvious computer uses, which is far from the full list of tasks that programs that out there can perform).
He didn't assert that it must be incorrect, he said that it may not be correct. It's not an ad hominem to be suspicious of a source.
But semantics are important here. If that's not what the OP meant by "supernatural", then what on earth did he mean?
This is exactly the problem. People throw around claims like "supernatural", "dimensions", "energy", "souls", and so on, but without any definition of what they mean, these claims are meaningless.
the rest is adult
Well, the UK has that covered too - from January, they start criminalising possession of adult images too.
as always, anything that isn't praising Apple gets modded down
And the mods prove it - brilliant!
I'm still waiting for a Motorola V980 Gaming Continues To Grow article, btw.